Tablighi Jamaat spreaders cause COVID-19 explosion in India

Suspected COVID-19 patients being taken to a Delhi hospital from Nizamuddin area after a religious congregation of 2,000 people at a mosque.

New
Delhi (IANS): The Tablighi Jamaat connection to COVID-19
cases in India is exploding as these spreaders crisscross the country to reach
their hometowns.

According
to a Health Ministry update issued on Thursday evening, about 400 positive COVID-19
cases found across 10 states and Union Territories have links to the Tablighi
Jamaat cluster in Nizamuddin.

The
figures continue to spike as many more are testing positive. By night, between
Tamil Nadu and Delhi, the cases are 264 and 124, respectively, showing the
highest number of cases. In fact, all the nine deaths in Telangana have the
Tablighi connection.

At
400 cases, one in every five cases in India has a Tablighi connection as of now
and this ratio is likely to go up as the new cases detected on Thursday are
primarily Tablighi-related.

On
Thursday, in state after state, the trend is that almost all new cases are
coming with a Markaz connection. The Tablighi connection has now become the
single biggest source of the COVID-19 spread despite 130 crore [1.30 billion] people
being under lockdown in India.

Before
this outbreak happened in Nizamuddin, the spike in cases had mellowed and some
commentators had even suggested that India may be better off than the other
countries.

The
number of cases has indeed seen an explosion after more than 2,000 people came
out of the Nizamuddin Markaz, the headquarters of the Tablighi Jamaat in Delhi.

Lav
Agarwal, the Joint Secretary in the Union Health Ministry, said that additional
testing to identify new cases is in progress, as people from the Nizamuddin
area have moved to several states across the country.

The
official from the Health Ministry added that out of nearly 2,000 Tablighi
Jamaat members in Delhi, 1,804 have been quarantined while 334 have been
admitted to different hospitals.

According
to the Delhi Health Department, 129 new cases were reported from the Nizamuddin
Markaz in a day. In total, 182 people have tested positive from the Nizamuddin
Markaz so far. Till Wednesday night, only 52 had tested positive from the
building.

Delhi
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said on Thursday that the number of positive
cases can increase massively.

“The
government has decided to test all those who were evacuated from the
Markaz,” Kejriwal said, adding that out of the 2,348 people evacuated from
the building, 1,810 people are at the quarantine facilities while 536 are at
the hospitals.

“Two
evacuated from Nizamuddin Markaz have died due to coronavirus in the last 24
hours,” he said.

The
largest number of cases has been seen in Tamil Nadu where at least 264 from the
Tablighi group have now tested positive. Of the 75 new cases that emerged in
the state on Thursday, as many as 74 have a Tablighi connection.

The
story is the same in the northeast, where out of the 20 positive cases, 18 took
part in the Tablighi Jamaat congregation at the Nizamuddin Markaz last month.

According
to Assam Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, three attendees of the Tablighi
event from the state’s Goalpara district have tested positive for COVID-19 on
Thursday, taking the state’s tally to 16.

Sarma
had earlier said that the Centre has communicated to the state that over 500
people from Assam had attended the Tablighi meet.

In
Andhra Pradesh, of the 143 cases, 99 are those who attended the Tablighi meet
in Delhi, though no deaths have been reported so far.

Telangana
has seen the maximum number of deaths. The state has seen nine deaths, all of
whom attended the Tablighi event. The total number of cases in Telangana is
127, of which 50 fall under this criterion.

In
Karnataka, 11 persons who had attended the Tablighi event have tested positive
for the dreaded virus, Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa said on Thursday.

“As
many as 91 people from Bidar in the state’s northern region were tested and 11
of them reported positive, while 80 tested negative,” Yediyurappa told
reporters earlier in the day.

Kerala
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Thursday informed that 157 Keralites, who
attended the Tablighi Jamaat meeting, have been identified.

“Two
of them are positive and are under treatment. These people have now been traced
and they hail from all the 14 districts of the state. These people are either
in isolation at their homes or in observation at hospitals, while some of them
are in Delhi also,” said Vijayan.

Three
people from Himachal Pradesh, who had returned to the state after attending the
Tablighi meet, tested positive for coronavirus on Thursday, an official said. A
total of 190 people have been identified to have returned to the state after
attending the religious congregation in Delhi.

Meanwhile,
Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar said on Thursday that 725 people,
who attended the Tablighi event, have been kept under quarantine.

Positive
cases with the Tablighi connect have also been traced in Rajasthan.